Thursday, May 24, 2018

The Carnian Pluvial Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnian_Pluvial_Event was a time of major change for the earth and its supercontinent Pangea. Namely, lots and lots of rain, and all the changes it brings. That was when the forests grew and dinosaurs began to rise to dominance, about 230 million years ago. From the images in this video from PBS Eons, that episode appears to be the line between the familiar (dinosaurs and forests) and the weird, weird, plants and animals that populated earth before that. (via Digg)

Can you stack boxes too high for Maru to climb into? Maybe the real question is, how can you get that many boxes all the same size? Well, I can imagine if you're mugumogu, people just give you boxes all the time. Maru eventually meets his match, and we get to hear him meow more than we've ever heard before. (via Everlasting Blort)

Yes, there's a sinkhole opening up at the White House lawn. Engineers blame the swamp (really). A new Twitter account takes on the persona of the sinkhole and updates us on its mission to swallow the White house and possibly all of Washington, DC.

This video from College Humor contains a little NSFW language. When you find yourself living alone, it is tempting to just eat your favorite food all the time. That gets old. Eventually you resort to sandwiches and cold cereal, and when you realize that cold cereal leads to dirty dishes, your diet become just sandwiches and chips. You might be tempted to whip up an entire meal fresh from scratch, but don't do it. Rationalize not doing it by telling yourself it's too time-consuming so that you don't have to think about how very alone you are. So very, utterly alone. (via Tastefully Offensive)

dough: a bread, an uncooked bread
ray: of sun that cooks the bread
me: a gal who eats the bread
fa: ther also eats the bread
so: da bread’s a kind of bread
la: vash is another bread
tea: a drink. anyway, bread!
that will bring us back to dough

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

There were several Star Wars feature-length productions that are completely ignored in the Star Wars canon. They are Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, Ewoks: The Battle of Endor, and The Star Wars Holiday Special. Fans would just as soon forget all of them. Screen Junkies produced an Honest Trailer for all three in one video, and it's about as honest as everyone else has been about the quality of these spinoffs. If you've never seen any of them, just watch the trailer, and be satisfied that these clips will be all you need to know that you're missing nothing of importance.

A lonely avocado has an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. No, wait, he is empty because his stomach doesn't have a pit. He's searching for his other half. This sweet short film by David Bizzaro was selected for more than 30 film festivals so far. (via The Kid Should See This)

Monday, May 21, 2018

Although he's been kept busy appearing several blockbuster movies, Andy Serkis has been working on his movie Mowgli for the past five years. It is based on Rudyard Kipling's story of a feral child raised by wolves The Jungle Book,
but is very different from either Disney version: it's closer to
Kipling's original, there's no singing, and the story continues after
Mowgli joins a community of people. Serkis also put his extensive
motion-capture experience to work to film the animals in a new way.

We
very carefully, in a long development period, designed the animals to
fit the actor’s faces. So, the way we approached it was, if you take it
on the left side, you’ve got an image of Christian Bale’s face, and then
on the right hand side, you’ve got an image of a panther. We morphed
Christian’s face over a series of images, backwards from the panther and
towards Christian until we reached a sweet spot where somewhere along
that spectrum you could actually see both. So, it was in the design of
the animals. That was where the secret lies. And then, having the actors
just play with Rohan Chand—this extraordinary young actor who plays
Mowgli—to actually have them in the same space connecting with each
other and emotionally finding the scenes together. So that really was
something. that was the big difference. And I think when you see it, you
won’t question whether these things feel alive.

Did you know there's a new Star Wars movie coming out Friday? Yeah, sure it's a "Star Wars Story," but fans are looking forward to Solo while trying to reserve judgment before they see it. When you go to the theater, see how many of these five stages illustrated by How It Should Have Ended are really true. (via Tastefully Offensive)

Lucas the Spider, from animator Joshua Slice, is a tiny but adorable little arachnid. He has seen a few adventures in the great big world. But now he has an opportunity to be a giant spider when he finds a cute little miniature village! Lucas soon learns that being a giant isn't any easier than being tiny, especially when you are young and inexperienced. (via Laughing Squid)

Apartments Are Stocked, Toys Donated. Only the Refugees Are Missing. The flow of refugees to the United States has slowed nearly to a halt, demonstrating that what President Trump’s administration could not achieve by executive order, it is accomplishing by bureaucracy. (via Metafilter)

An Invisible Warship is at the Center of WWII’s Greatest Urban Legend. Secret experiments, magnetic fields, and conspiracy theories led people to believe the USS Eldridge achieved teleportation.

The Next Big Discovery in Astronomy Has Already Been Found. We Just Don't Know It Yet. Many important breakthroughs come from interpreting old data.

Richard Wilkinson is producing a series of insect illustrations based on Star Wars characters called Arthropoda Iconicus. Star Wars fans will recognize who inspired each of these insects, but non-Star Wars fans will be forgiven if they take them as real species.

Sunday, May 20, 2018

The nine kittens in the TinyKittens livestream are now quite energetic once they all got their eyes open. They've been moved to a larger nest, a playroom, actually, with all kinds of toys, including a giant shoe bed and a tiny camper. All nine of them squeezed into the camper at once, and when it got too crowded, Aura made a graceful exit. Aura is still being tube-fed, but she is growing and surprisingly healthy. Shelly, their caretaker, is trying to introduce the kittens to kibble, but they aren't all that impressed with real food yet. You can get regular updates at their Facebook page.

The question in the title sounds like we are going to name a new superhero. No, this is another audio illusion that might freak you out a bit. A toy says "brainstorm." Or maybe it says "green needle." You need to decide which one it is before you play the video. Then play it again, thinking about the other option. Keep your finger on the replay button (bottom left on the video), and you'll find that this toy says what you expect it to say, even if you change your mind between plays. Some people hear "green storm" or "brain needle," but that's because they chose to hear it. For some science behind the phenomena, and the actual answer to what this toy is saying, go to HuffPo. (via Geekologie)

Trump meets his lawyers and his sons for a meal and the scene takes on the appearance of a Sopranos episode as a mysterious G-man keeps an eye on the proceedings. Ben Stiller returns to Saturday Night Live as Michael Cohen, and Robert De Niro plays Robert Mueller without a word. As usual, Kate McKinnon steals the show as Rudy Giuliani in last night's show opening.

Why did peppers develop their heat? Scientists once assumed that pepper plants produce capsaicin to deter animals from eating them. But that explanation doesn't quite hold up in nature. Birds aren't affected by capsaicin, which is why you should put pepper seeds in the birdseed to keep squirrels out of it. Hank Green tells us what we know so far about pepper evolution in this SciShow video. (via Digg)

This restaurant is in the District of Columbia, which also has eateries named Thaiphoon and Beau Thai. Residents say the pun names are inversely proportional to the food quality. They recommend Regent Thai, Baan Thai, or Little Serow. (via reddit)

After ten years of sharing his ennui and nihilism, Henri is retiring
from making videos. He says he's retiring, but his farewell video makes
it clear that he has given up on sharing his existential philosophy
because no one one listened anyway. From Facebook:

Well,
the time has come. My final video with the annoying thieving filmmaker
is here. Now, I will finally be able to officially retire in peace and
work on my philosophy without interruptions. I plan on writing the great
feline-american novel. I thank all of you for your support and
adulation.

This is a very "attractive" video. Let's see what happens when a large magnet meets a group of smaller magnets -in slow motion. It's fascinating to see the different reactions depending on the size and configurations of the magnets. And the slow motion is crucial, because in real time it happens in the blink of an eye, which is no fun. We get a glimpse of that at the end. (via Laughing Squid)

If there were any doubt that Judy Garland had the greatest movie line of all time in The Wizard of Oz, take a look at how many other movies have used it! See a list of films used in this supercut at fourfour. (via Buzzfeed)

Friday, May 18, 2018

The busy minds at How It Should Have Ended found a bunch of the plot holes in Black Panther and applied real-world logic to them. That kind of thing can make a superhero movie dangerously short. It's a good thing they threw in some other superheroes to make things interesting: Captain America (at least I think that's him -he wears a star) and a couple others you wouldn't expect in a Marvel movie. (via Tastefully Offensive)

In the original Star Wars trilogy, aliens were puppets and animatronics instead of CGI. Dave Barclay was a puppeteer in those movies, starting with assisting Frank Oz with Yoda. He was also inside Jabba the Hutt. Here he talks about bringing the aliens to life. (via Laughing Squid)

When Ze Frank took several years off from his True Facts series, he was apparently stockpiling scripts for his return. This is his third video in the past month! And it's quite interesting, even past the snarky comedy. Leaf-cutter ants are farmers. They use plants to grow fungus to feed animals. This benefits both the ants and the fungus (but maybe not the tree so much) in an example of mutualism. Other ants use various insects in other mutualism schemes, some of which can be pretty gross.

Harry Potter: The Sorcerer Is Stoned
Harry Potter and the Secret of One in the Chamber
Harry Potter and The Sorcerers Meth Lab
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stoner M16
Harry Potter and the Deadly Hollows
Harry Potter and the Ingestion of Unknown Drug
Dirty Harry Potter and the Chamber of Bullets
Harry Potter and the Order of the Glock
Harry Potter and the Goblet of “Fire at Will”

Cephalopods are weird. Squids get less publicity than octopuses, but they are really weird as well. The sea creatures have developed so many strategies for evading predators in the sea that we marvel how undersea life is totally different from the way land animals go through life. Ink! Jet propulsion! Chromatophores! Disconnected sensory systems! And squids have even more "superpowers" in this TED-Ed video. (via Digg)

A Spoiler-Free Review of Deadpool 2. Basically, if you liked the first Deadpool, you'll love this one, too.

Bacteriophage therapy to fight superbugs (seen here) is not FDA approved, so very few patients in the US have the treatment, and they must get a compassionate waiver to even try it. Read about one such patient -who happened to be married to an infectious-disease epidemiologist, in an article at Mother Jones.

My younger daughter, the one I refer to as Gothgrrl on the blog, has always loved elephants. From a young age, she told me she was going to grow up and get a job taking care of elephants. I never told her she couldn't do that, but I said she might have to expand her focus to take care of all animals, if she wanted to work in a zoo or something. I guess she showed me. She is working on a degree in zoology, and is spending the summer interning in an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. She's the one in the middle. She found the place, got the job, received a grant, and made all the arrangements herself. I couldn't be more proud.

What kills more living things than anything else? A bacteriophage is not a bacteria; it's a virus that kills bacteria. As a virus, it walks the line between living and non-living. It kills trillions of bacteria every day. However, we are now looking at bacteriophages as something we can use for our own ends. Kurzgesagt explains it all to us.

Spike Lee's new movie BlacKkKlansman tells the true story of Ron Stalworth, the first black cop is the Colorado Springs Police Department who infiltrated the Klan. The film, produced by Jordan Peele, debuted at Cannes on Monday.

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

The internet has something new to argue about. Is this voice saying "Yanny" or "Laurel"? The more you listen to it, the more you might be unsure. Supposedly, younger people tend to hear Yanny while older people tend to hear Laurel. The pitch is completely different, and I hear both at the same time. Which one you hear may also depend on your device and the volume. Scientists are trying to explain why people hear different things.

Raul Veiga, CEO of production company Radial Producoes, said it's an example of the McGurk Effect — when you hear something different from the actual sound because of visual stimulus.

"So...it’s actually a very poor quality recording and the brain gets influenced by what you read first, before you actually hear it. What gets people confused is that it’s not Yanny or Laurel, it’s more of a YAREL thing," he said.

The device you're using to listen it on can also have an effect.

"Different speakers or headphones can have drastically different frequency response profiles (for instance, laptop speakers have limited low frequency response), which will lead to either name being more emphasized to a listener," Poppy Crum, chief scientist at Dolby Laboratories, said in a statement.

The different words people hear is making this the "what color is this dress" controversy of 2018. What are you hearing? Leave a comment, or use the poll at Neatorama. (via Buzzfeed)

Now that Black Panther is out on home video, Screen Junkies got enough footage to give it an Honest Trailer. And an Honest Trailer is necessary because you probably enjoyed the movie so much that you missed the plot holes. And you can't have a superhero movie without plot holes.

Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot has learned to run and jump! The company unveiled a demonstration of the robot's new skills last week, and Auralnauts wasted no time giving the footage a plot. Here is their remix making Atlas an escapee from the factory. (via Laughing Squid)